In The End (just maybe)
by CodependentCollision
Summary: Emma pleads with her to continue the chemo, cries, begs, threatens to leave.


**A/N:** My best friend asked for fluffy Swan Queen... so, naturally my brain came up with established Swan Queen where Regina has cancer and has elected to stop chemo. I promise I'll write actually fluffy SQ soon! So fluffy it'll make your teeth rot, I swear!

* * *

Regina doesn't look at it as giving up, she just knows when she's beaten and has the grace to go down with her dignity.

Emma pleads with her to continue the chemo, cries, begs, threatens to leave; but that only backfires when Regina shrugs and gestures to the door. Emma knows she doesn't mean it, that Regina is only trying to get her point across, but that doesn't stop her from putting her fist through the hallway drywall and crying until she wants to puke on the hardwood floor.

Regina doesn't come to her rescue, but waits her out in the living room until Emma comes to her with pale skin and red eyes, sniffing and cradling her already-bruising hand to her chest. They curl up together on the couch and Emma wouldn't deny it if someone accused her of maybe just crying silently a little more.

Regina has been her entire life for ten years. She's allowed to come apart at the seams.

* * *

Some nights Regina's just too sore or too tired, but tonight she's the one pulling Emma on top of her, sealing their mouths together and pulling at their clothes.

Emma fucks her slowly, folding their fingers together and pressing the backs of Regina's hands to the pillow beneath her. Regina's just as hot and desperate— even more so now— under her, arching and panting and biting at Emma's lips when Emma tries to speak.

She doesn't want to hear it, doesn't want to hear anything Emma might say in this moment, because she might be withering on the inside but right here, right now, with Emma's inside of her and looking at her like she's still shiny and new like the night they'd first done this in the back of the Granny's all those years ago, she's alive.

The only time she allows Emma to whisper against her ear is when she comes; Regina knows what she says, just like every time before it, even though she can't quite make out the syllables between the choked whimpers of Emma's orgasm. The _I love you_ is just as present now as it was the first time. It always will be.

Regina holds her close, letting Emma's body cover hers, sticky and too hot afterwards. It's the only way either of them get to sleep anymore.

Regina doesn't mind spending whatever's left like this.

* * *

Katherine takes her to see her lawyer the day she takes away Emma's power of attorney.

* * *

They've become boring, Regina thinks, sitting at home, outside every night that it isn't raining.

Since Regina quit the holistic diet and the treatment a permanent storm front seems to have moved in over the Storybrooke area. It rains for days and days. Emma thinks it's fitting and allows herself to wallow whenever Regina's not in the mood to have her attached at the hip.

She stares out with the new puppy Regina has given her that she's yet to name, petting him both and watching the hard-hitting drops strike the window and coming up with metaphor after metaphor for her heartache between the two.

* * *

Emma discusses nothing of how she's feeling and Regina shuts her out even more until she presents Regina with a tear-stained notebook, pages torn out and taped back in, lines crossed out and then rewritten. She's got nothing to hide from Regina and she's never hidden the things she's ashamed of before. Why should she start now?

Regina cries and adds her own words and saves them for Emma to finish _later_.

* * *

When Regina is hospitalized Emma forces herself to throw up twice a day just so she's hungry when Henry stops by every day at one and hangs around until visiting hours end at nine. He always brings lunch and Archie always brings dinner.

Both of them are there when Regina finally blinks her eyes open at eight fifty one night. Neither of them look away when Emma climbs into bed with her and strokes her cheek with her face pressed to Regina's throat.

They move Regina back home and Emma doesn't argue when Henry takes time off college to move back home.

* * *

"I want to travel. I've never seen any of this world outside of Storybrooke," Regina tells her one night.

Emma doesn't hesitate for even a moment before calling airlines and hotels.

Seven cities they decide on, the final Chicago. All planned to the brim. All painful reminders of what she knows she's leaving behind. Henry and Emma chatter on either side of her and Archie is a solid force at her back, the vibrations echoing through the city and up her legs; she feels strong for the first time since she'd pulled out handfuls of her own hair in the shower months and months ago, when the realization really hit that this wasn't going to work.

Emma kisses and coddles her more than ever before. She's pretty sure what Emma does to her on the streets in Boston constitutes as making out. The people on the street don't seem to mind.

She doesn't fight it when she starts to cry at the end of the first city. Or midway through the forth. She doesn't mind the fact that her face is damp through the sixth, knowing that Chicago is the very next day, the last city. She has to stop for a moment when she chokes up at the hotel that evening and Emma tells her they can stop.

Regina merely wipes her sweaty-tear drenched face and tells her that, "The show must go on." with a grin both of them know she doesn't feel.

Emma watches her in complete awe, the same way she always has, but this time, this one time, Regina thinks that maybe she deserves it.

Chicago… Regina doesn't cry at all during the Chicago portion.

She's lit up by the street lights and completely serene looking. Emma recognizes the resignation in the set of her shoulders [same as at her diagnosis] and the look of acceptance on her face [same as when she told Emma that everything would be okay].

* * *

Emma keeps a stack of photo albums, compiled from the beginning. She'd pooled her resources when she decided a few months previous to begin the project. Everyone sends her pictures, her parents, and friends donate everything Emma knows they have to her cause. Henry helps her and Emma can't hold back the jokes about how domestic and boring they've become, practically scrapbooking together one night a week.

Regina doesn't like being reminded that she's being immortalized on the stiff white pages because she's going to die. She doesn't help. And while Emma can't blame her, she doesn't stop.

* * *

They're spending a few hours out, pressed tightly together, Emma's hands on Regina's recently sharp hips and brazenly making out in a bar until Regina complains of a headache. Emma leads her to the door immediately, grabbing their jackets from coat check and Regina throws up the moment they set foot on the sidewalk.

Emma tries unsuccessfully not to panic. Regina eventually calms her down enough to get her back to the car.

Emma feels weaker than she ever has in her entire life but she doesn't mind it so much when Regina takes control and eases her fingers inside of her later, when her anxiety medication has kicked back in. She wraps her legs around Regina's back and takes what she has to give until neither one of them has the energy to attempt to go again and Regina's sleepy _I love you_ makes her heart thud harder than ever in her chest.

They fall asleep the same way, Emma on top of Regina, listening to her heartbeat and reminding herself that this is Regina. She's still with her and if she can just hold on then maybe…

Maybe there'll be a tomorrow without Regina being too tired to work on town ordinances and spend a few hours out by the pool with their son and dog.

Maybe there'll be months and months more.

Maybe.

Regina kisses her forehead and Emma tightens her grip and falls asleep with tears clinging to her eyelashes.

Just maybe.


End file.
